


Never let them take the light behind your eyes

by redshineJasper (MrsPummeluff)



Series: Hargreeves try and often succeed [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Good Sibling Ben Hargreeves, Good Sibling Number Five | The Boy, Good Sibling Vanya Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Nightmares, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Soft Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Time Travel, Traumatised Klaus Hargreeves, i don't know how to tag, the mausoleum
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:42:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22323520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrsPummeluff/pseuds/redshineJasper
Summary: When they travel back in time, they try to make it right. But then there are these subtle changes they have to get accustomed to. But really, who will notice, if a thing or two don't change. That's what Klaus thinks at least. At least his siblings will be fine. After all Vanya had always been the most compassionate of them all. The one who had cared the most.Just a little bit of fix-it with the Hargreeves siblings healing and really being a family. Ben/Klaus hinted if you squint. I admit I wrote it with them being soft and in love in the back of my mind. And with mentioned Dave/Klaus because he has so much love to give and Klaus is a big softy. Almost as big as Diego.
Relationships: Ben Hargreeves/Klaus Hargreeves (implied), Dave/Klaus Hargreeves (mentioned), Klaus Hargreeves & Everyone
Series: Hargreeves try and often succeed [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606813
Comments: 5
Kudos: 137





	Never let them take the light behind your eyes

„Hey“, his voice is quiet as he stands in her doorway the minute she stops playing her violin.

“Hey, Klaus. Are you alright?”

She has always been the more compassionate of them all. The one who had cared the most. Well, he thinks, right after me. And that was right, if they would think back to their childhood they would notice all the small think that Klaus had done for them.

Well, their first childhood apparently since they were back now, about to make things better. Change it all around with even Luther not on their father’s side anymore.

He enters the room and slides down on the wall next to it, smiling up at his sister.

“How about you keep playing?”

“Are they too loud again?” she asks frowning. He nods, trying to keep their voices at bay. If he didn’t look at them, it was easier but when he turned away as they walked into his line of sight, they noticed he saw them and became worse and worse with every minute he tried to drown them out. He was lucky to be back in the past with being sober again since they hadn’t killed that many people yet. There weren’t so many ghosts all around him just yet.

“Anything in particular you want me to play?” she asks with her low voice that was just very welcome. He shakes his head and Vanya nods, thinking for a second before she starts playing. It was the song she had first learned when she was eight. He smiled. He knew because he had always sat with her, listening and telling her how great she sounded. How special she was for playing so beautifully. They hadn’t known what else she could do with the sounds she produced. Now they knew. And their father knew something was up. But had given up three weeks after they had returned to this time, in this new timeline. Maybe not given up, Klaus thinks, maybe just backed off for now.

Closing his eyes he tips his head back against the wall, letting the music wash over him. He smiles and he is pretty sure he dozes off. When he opens his eyes, Vanya sits next to him, her Violin in its case. He smiles weakly at her.

“Can’t you sleep?”

He shakes his head. Not much after they had returned here two months ago. Even less these past few weeks. He had started to miss the constant presence that was Ben. He wasn’t used to the ghosts being so loud. It had been easy to ignore in Vietnam, with the Helicopters above and the guards who were walking through the forest. And Dave had always been close to him. It had helped ignoring the ghosts when he had gotten sober. It had also helped that some of the ghosts at some point already knew him when they died not far from him when the shells from their enemies rained on them. They asked him so send off that last letter to their families and then went on and left or stayed by his side until he left Vietnam. They made good spies was their reasoning.

When Dave had been shot, when Klaus had sat on their cot, the briefcase in his lap, Dave had crouched in front of him.

‘Want me to stay? Or wait for you, when you go back home?’ he had offered but Klaus has shaken his head. He didn’t want that for Dave.

‘No. Go on. You deserve to life a good life after death. Believe me, I’ve seen it a few times, not for long though. I’ll be fine. Don’t forget that I love you, okay. I’ll see you when my time has come.’

That was it. Dave had left shortly after, as had the rest of his dead friends. And he had left too. Back home, where no one but Ben had noticed him being gone for so long.

He had drifted off again, he knows. He wants to tell Vanya he is sorry for coming and then sleeping for so long, but she just shakes her head. Tells him, if she can help him get some sleep by playing or being by his side, she will be more than happy. After all he had done so much more for her when they were children before. He smiles and snuggles up to her, closing his eyes. He doesn’t register when Luther enters the room and Vanya asks him to help her move Klaus onto her Bed.

He knows that when he wakes up, all of his siblings are lying around him in a big heap on the floor on apparently all the pillows they had found around the house. He sees Ben, snuggled up on his left blinking up to him, still half asleep. His brother tugs at his arm and Klaus snuggles closer to him, relishing in the knowledge that Ben is alive and this time they can at least try and prevent his death.

It’s a week later, that Sir Reginald once again sets them up with training and when he keeps Klaus back after dinner, he feels bile gathering in his throat. He knows what Sir Reginald wants. None of his siblings have been held back for special training yet. Klaus understands since they all could literally show Reginald the control they have now, they have learned back before coming to the past. Even Five. But Klaus can’t. He has been sober for almost three months by now, his new record since he really had been thirteen, and yet he couldn’t explicitly show what he can do to Sir Reginald. Especially since he doesn’t feel the need of making any of the ghosts he sees corporeal. He knows he could, but that’s written on another page he thinks.

He sits in the car, leg bouncing nervously. He never before had been in the mausoleum. At least in this timeline. But he knew what would come. He took deep and steady breaths when he followed Sir Reginald over the damp way between the graves where he could see ghosts weeping, for themselves or the families they lost. They arrive in front of the big stone building he knew so well.

“And you stay in there until I come back to get you”, finishes Reginald and Klaus nods. He hadn’t bothered to listen, his father’s words still haunting him and much likely they would even more now after this night. He just hoped to be back for breakfast, before anyone got suspicious. He didn’t want them to worry. Having their father focus on him would hopefully keep him away from them just a little bit longer. He even had bothered to leave a note for them, in case any of them wanted to spend time with him. Unlikely, even now, but who knew.

Just then the big doors closed behind him and he took a deep breath. It would be over soon, he thought to himself. You’ve been through this already. You will make it again.

It was then a ghost appeared in front of him, talking to him, helpless mumbling and soon more and more ghost followed. He still tried not to show them he heard them, but still they were so loud. So unbearably loud and hard to ignore. He let out a sob when he sat down against the wall.

He almost jumped when one of the ghosts shut up, before coming closer. _Oh no_ , Klaus thought, _they found out I can see them._

And he was right. More and more ghosts appeared, called by the rest. Some he had seen outside already, now they were asking him to revenge them when they had been killed or tell their families what happened to them and they were so loud.

Klaus held onto the hope that even if he couldn’t control them yet, he at least had lost the fear. Maybe his father would let him out the first or second time he opened that big door again, instead of leaving him in this tomb for two days as he had back then. He had been itching for something to numb and silence them for a while now. But he knew he shouldn’t. He was actually so proud of himself for staying clean for so long. He knew Dave would be proud, because his siblings were.

It was when the door opened, that he ghosts shut up and Klaus composed himself before his father could see him. He had tried not to cry to not make it obvious. And his father seemed almost proud. Not of Klaus of course, but the progress he thought Klaus had made. But at least it got him out of the mausoleum when the first rays of sunshine filter through the trees. They would be at home before breakfast. Maybe Klaus could even change and come out of his room like he hasn’t been locked in a grave for hours on end.

When he quietly enters his bedroom just half an hour before mom makes her rounds, shaking them all awake, Klaus sees Ben, sleeping on his bed. He smiles at his brother. Would Ben know? Would Ben guess where he had been all night. If someone knew, it would be Ben. He walks closer to the bed, laying onto it with his dusty clothes and snuggles into Ben’s side.

“K… Klaus?” Ben mumbles and Klaus borrows closer.

“hmmmm…” he replies and takes deep breaths, breathing in Ben’s scent, letting it calm him down.

“Where’ve you been?” he asks, yawning before wrapping his arms around Klaus, pulling him close. Releasing a breath, Klaus shudders.

“Dad took me for special training”, he mumbles, feeling Ben underneath him stiffen. He pokes Ben in the side, trying to get him to loose up.

“Klaus. Why didn’t you tell me? Five probably would have broken you out, if we couldn’t have stopped him.”

“Wanna keep you all safe”, Klaus whispers, “don’t want him to put any of you through it. Don’t tell them. Don’t tell anyone.”

“Klaus…”

“Promise”, he urges his brother and sighing his brother nods in defeat.

“Okay. But I don’t like it. I really don’t like it.”

They stay in Klaus’ bed until Vanya knocks, calling them down for breakfast. They stand up, Ben telling Klaus to get changed and meet downstairs in the kitchen. Klaus nods and changes into a new uniform that was hanging in his wardrobe. He feels something heavy in his jacket, pulling it out he is holding a back of weed. It makes him gulp.

He tries. He feels the urge to take it. He knows somewhere should be the rest of his material and he could just roll a joint, tell Ben he had taken a shower after his long night.

A shower did actually sound amazing.

He grips the weed tight and takes the rest out of his bedside table and leaves his room.

Downstairs in the kitchen he drops everything in front of his siblings, looking at them, a stricken look on his face.

“Could anyone get rid of this for me?”

He doesn’t dare to look at anyone until he feels Allison and Vanya as they wrap their arms around him. He hears Allison mumble “I am so proud of you.”

It makes him smile.

In the evening, after Dinner when Klaus is getting ready for bed, still shaken from the night before, Ben quietly slips in. Klaus notices him, as his brother wraps his arms around his chest and pulls him close.

Ben had been through so much shit with him in their time before, after he had died. Ben had stuck with him when he had been high, in rehab, when he had sold himself to other junkies on the streets for money or drugs. Ben had seen all his ups and downs. Now Ben was holding onto him tight and just being quiet, not saying a word. But Klaus knows what he wants to say. Klaus knows how proud Ben probably had been the moment, he had laid the weed on the table to get rid of it.

He turns around, hiding his face in Ben’s shoulder and takes a shaking breath.

“I want it to be over. I don’t want it anymore. I finally want to make you all proud. I finally want to be a part of our family.”

“You are a part of our family. You are a vital part and you always have been.” Ben reassures him and they lower themselves on Klaus’ bed and stay there for a while, wrapped up in each other.

“You know, I thought Diego would throw it out since he went first to grab it, then he handed it to me and told me, I should do it. Give me the honors. And I almost cried, when I burned it all in the backyard.”

Klaus smiles up at him and presses a slight kiss onto Ben’s cheek, making his brother blush.

“Go to bed and wake me for breakfast tomorrow morning”, Klaus says quietly and lets go of his brother, turning back to grab his shirt and hears Ben leave the room with a small “sleep well, Klaus”.

Klaus lays down in bed, wrapping himself up in his blanket that still smells like Ben instead of weed as it always had and fell asleep just minutes after his head hits the pillow. He had been so tired after last night. And everything was so quiet.

When he wakes up he feels disorientated. He isn’t at home in his bed he notices. How did he wake up here, lying on the floor? Looking around he sees the leftovers of a briefcase, the ground he was laying on was broken and he could see the bus leaving the station. Blood staining his hands.

Someone steps in front of him. It was a small smile that graced his face. It appeared as soon as he looks up and lays eyes on his brother for the first time after his return from Vietnam.

“Ben”, he sobs out and his brother looks down at him sadly and crouches down.

“Why have you even bothered coming back? We’re all much better off without you.”

The cruel words echo in his mind and through the city, people turning to look at him. In the corner of his eyes he sees the rest of his siblings, disgust clear on their faces.

“Yeah”, Diego calls over, “you should have stayed there. Died there. Dave’s death was all your fault. As has the end of the world been.”

Klaus looks up, still kneeling on the ground. In front of him what was still left of the building that had once been the Academy.

“Why are you all so…” Klaus voice breaks mid-sentence, a sob breaking through. A hand lands on his shoulder, turning around he sees Vanya, clear milk white eyes, white suit. He gulps.

“He put you in a prison too. You know how it feels to be alone in a room full of nothing but your fears. Why would you leave me there, knowing how it felt? Did I really deserve it? Do you hate me that much?”

Tears run down his cheeks and he starts sobbing, asking for forgiveness, “I am sorry, V. I’ve tried, please you must believe me. I wanted to help you. Be there for you. Be a good brother.”

“KLAUS!” he heard from nowhere and everywhere around him and he shakes violently. No. Not he himself. Someone shakes him, “wake up, damnit!”

Klaus opens his eyes gasping and shoots up, almost head-butting Five in his face.

“Five? Where-?”

“You’re home, in your room. In 2002. We’re thirteen again. You were just dreaming, having a nightmare.”

“How did- how did you know?”

“I woke up, needed a glass of water. Your room is not too far away and I heard you sob and tossing and turning so I wanted to check up on you. It looked like- you weren’t breathing and I got scared. You wouldn’t breathe Klaus. I didn’t know what to do.”

Klaus hears how Five starts to sound distressed

Getting used to the dark surrounding them, Klaus can see the equally distressed look on his usually unfazed demeanor. His eyes seemed to shine with unshed tears in the moonlight that spills into the room through the window. Klaus notices tear tracks on Five’s face.

“I-”, he wants to say he is fine, reassure his brother who is so much older than him but right now just seems so young and helpless. He wants to call his brother out on his bullshit since his room is on the other end of the house. But he doesn’t

“I could use a glass of water too”, he says instead and gets up from his bed. Both wander in silence down the stairs and enter the kitchen through the hole in the wall. Five then blips over to the cupboards, getting them out two glasses, filling them with water from the tap while Klaus sits down at the table, wringing his hands nervously. The silence is tense and Five blips back to the table, setting the water onto the table in front of Klaus who wraps his long, slender finger around it.

“We’re thirteen and yet our minds are thirty”, Klaus rasps out and takes a deep breath, then he barks out a laugh, “it messes with my brain, Five.”

His brother frowns at him, “Has anything happened?”

Klaus bites his cheek, taps his finger against the glass before taking a sip, wetting his lips. Then he looks up at his brother, who still looks shaken.

“Dad used to put me into a mausoleum back then when we were younger, you know? To get over my fear of the dead. Sometimes for a whole day, even two sometimes. After each time, they got more and more persistent. At first I found out that alcohol, later weed make them at least a bit more bearable. Then I turned to ecstasy and other drugs that made them go away. That was around the time Ben died. He was there all the time and I felt so horrible that he died that I didn’t want to see him.

“But no matter how many drugs I took he was always there. At some point I stopped caring. If he wanted to stick around it was his decision. I know he just wanted to take care of me”, a pair of arms, that definitely didn’t belong to Five, who sat opposite of him at the table, wrapped around him. He took in the soft scent of Ben, who stayed behind him, always having his back when he needed it.

“I got clean, for him and for Dave”, Klaus continues, voice thick from sadness and guilt. The dream came back. It probably had been his fault Dave had died. As was Ben’s death his fault. He has always known it was. If he had been with Ben… maybe it would have been him who had died, not his brother.

Five grabs his hand, Ben clings tighter and Klaus can feel him shaking his head.

“No matter who of us had died, it wouldn’t have made a difference. And if they had believed you a bit more back then, they could still have talked to me. I was still there and you could have made me really be there”, Ben says and Klaus thinks he may have said his thoughts out loud.

“If I hadn’t done the drugs-“

“They shouldn’t have made a difference. They knew about your powers. They should have believed you anyways”, Ben cuts him off midsentence.

Klaus looks back down at the table, fingers playing around the rim of his glass.

“I had a dream”, he says quietly, “and I was glad you woke me up, Five.”

Tears prickle in his eyes as he retells what he had seen, what had been burned into his brain and wouldn’t come out. He feels Five’s hand on his tighten. He feels a tear or two from Ben falling into his neck. Being done, there is quiet. Just their slow breaths fill the silence. Then a flash of blue light and Five wraps himself around his slightly taller sibling. He sobs quietly.

“I don’t know how to help and it eats me up”, the boy admits, “and Delores had always been better at emotions than me. She could have told me what to do. I am sorry I never noticed. I want to be so smart but I am not if it comes to all of you and I hate it. I hate it.”

They all always had known Five had difficulties opening up, talking about and showing his feelings. But it had never been like that with Klaus. With Klaus Five had talked, in the middle of the night, when Klaus had been sitting on his windowsill, smoking his joint. Thing is, Five never thought Klaus would listen or even remember. But yeah, still after all these years of drug abuse and everything else that had happened, he still knew about Five’s fears. He just had never talked about it. He knew Five wouldn’t talk to him about it otherwise. The only one who knew some things, was Ben. Whenever Klaus had missed his siblings, Five the most, he had started talking to Ben about it. Ben had always listened.

Klaus leans into his Brothers, when another flash of blue light flashes in front of his closed eyes and when he opens them, the three of them lay in Five’s room, Five’s bed and his brother clings to him.

“Stay? I need you know you are safe. I don’t like dreaming you died too.”

And if that wasn’t something Klaus would have suspected if he hadn’t been shaken from his own dream. Maybe Five has had a nightmare of himself. After all he had seen them all dead when he was only thirteen and travelled into the future. Klaus knew how he would have felt. And he also knew that behind his stoic exterior, Five was the most vulnerable of them all.

He snuggles deeper into the mattress of the bed, bracketed between Five and Ben, relishing in the warmth shared between their bodies.

When Klaus wakes in the morning, they still cling to each other and Grace stands in the door, smiling at them softly. Klaus grins and she slowly, quietly comes over to the bed. If he wouldn’t know any better, he’d never think she was only made out of a few cables and circuits. But she was maybe more human than any of them. She strokes his hair out of his face and Klaus nuzzles into her hand.

“I let you sleep a bit longer. Your father hasn’t come back last night and won’t be too mad about it.”

With that she left the room and Ben curled a bit closer. “Good”, me mumbles sleepily, “wouldn’t even think about getting up.”

“Then don’t. Go back to sleep, Benny”, Klaus whispers, smiling at his brother softly and closes his eyes.

The next time he opens them, the rest of their siblings are there to drag them out for a day in the park with a promise of Ice Creams from Grace, who was ready to accompany them to their adventure of the day.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in this fandom. I hope you liked it. English is not my native language so I tried. I don't have a beta. If anyone wants to beta, feel free to leave a comment or check me out on tumblr (fangirlfaye) or Twitter (MrsPummeluff).


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